Peace-Pipe-less Powwow

Last night we had a meeting with another church’s pastor. They’re probably the closest church to us, and they’ve done as good as any other church in town at getting students to come to church. Their location is also right outside a university. This is the church that I’ve mentioned before – started by a foreigner, who left for visa problems, if I remember correctly. This was more than ten years ago, and this guy and his wife didn’t want to see the church close, and as God had really given them a real burden for the work, they assumed the pastorate.  We had a good talk – St. and T. did a great job of asking lots of questions. There wasn’t really a purpose for the meeting unfortunately, so that was kind of awkward. One of their students that visits our church regularly asked us both to meet, so we did. It was probably a good thing, though – they have several students wandering our way, and I wanted to personally tell him that I didn’t want his members. Seriously, not trying to sound spiritual. I don’t want them to come too often. 

I got up to go to the bathroom about two-thirds of the way through the meeting, and when I got back, T. had his Bible open talking about why women aren’t biblically permitted to be pastors. How’d that happen? Apparently, the girl who came with the pastor (she comes to our services a lot, too) wanted to know why God had put a desire in her heart to be a pastor if the Bible said she couldn’t. That’ll be a fun question to answer in the future – we’re fast developing a reputation for the only church in town that doesn’t believe women should preach. St. and T. did a good job answering. I asked her pastor if he had anything to add, since I wanted St. and T. to hear the normal reasoning behind it. It’s always very pragmatic: if there’s no men of God in a place, what’s to stop God from calling a woman to preach? Oh, I don’t know, maybe Him saying that He wouldn’t? All very civil, though; overall, a very good meeting.